Apparently Apple is getting back into the Chip manufacturing game again. We can only hope as x86 PC users go, that they don’t abandon Intel’s architecture completely in the near future so that we can still dual boot and run Virtual Machines like Parallels and boot alternatives like Ubuntu. What is more likely, if we’re going to play the speculation game, utilizing PA Semi Apple plans to continue to push the envelope with mobile computing implementing low power parallel processors to the point where Intel chips are not relevant. This seems possible. If you consider the computing shift from massive mainframes, to workstations and now laptops, the future of computing is largely OS and processor agnostic. The excitement over so called ‘Netbooks isn’t just that you can “hack” a $400 MSI Wind Laptop and make it run OS X Leopard it’s that the model is shifting from proprietary systems and dedicated hardware moving computing straight into the ether. Which begs the point that the iPhone is only the beginning of Apple’s mobile computing strategy and that in 10 years time the current generation of MacBook’s with their svelte machined aluminum uni-body enclosures will seem elephantine.

For the record, I did get the 7200 RPM Seagate 320GB hard drive to fit the MBP and upgraded the Airport mini PCI card to 802.11n Extreme. It goes pretty well over the Time Capsule for backup with Leopard’s Time Machine. Yes, I upgraded to Leopard too. And it boots way way faster than Tiger ever did for whatever reason (not just the 7200 RPMs). I slip-streamed XP Service Pack 3 and then did the whole Boot Camp installation on a 100 GB partition, SolidWorks Student Edition worked fine which was something of a relief for me.

Also, I have a new 2009 Trek XO2 frame to ride off the pavement of New York. There are a few more ‘cross races this season and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make them all as they tend to be 1-2 hours away in Jersey and it’s like $30 per race. My hopes are to ride the Croatan Aqueduct trail, do the mountain bike loop in High Bridge Park in Harlem, and perhaps take Metro North and ride some of the trails in the Hudson River Valley. There is a race weekend in the Hampton’s and with entry to a citizen’s race your number is entered to the raffle for a Richard Sachs’ custom cyclo-cross bicycle complete with full SRAM kit (so as to skip the 7 year waiting list and selling of kidney).

Aside from the crazy news of what happened in this tiny Westchester community (See 7online News) our return trip yesterday to Valhalla felt nothing like a homecoming. Maybe it was the fact that it was Saturday morning. Maybe it is by noon every small child needs to be at a birthday party. Or maybe when you are at a gigantic gym you should never have people climbing next to you. Unfortunately by noon, all these things were happening. Perhaps the best and most telling was this exchange as Josh and I worked on a new problem. After one try a young fellow with long hair comes up and says, “Hey do you mind? Let me try it?” Josh walks off. They guys climbs the problem easily as he has obviously done it countless times before. Josh comes back. “Hey you didn’t get to see me do it?”, “Yeah”, Josh says, “I like to try to figure it out for myself.” There you have it, gym etiquette 101. Don’t jump on other peoples lines, when they are figuring it out.

At this point a shrill woman with her 8 year old were fighting with each other. The child was running around bouncing off of things. She tries to ask us what easy things he can climb, but before we even tell her, “Less than 100 points” as they were rated, she and her equally shrill and awful child are climbing and yelling at each other again. Westchester is beautiful. Also, if the the gym is 10,000 square feet, find a line that isn’t on top of someone else. So simple. Weekends at gyms suck. This Saturday further reinforced this for me. Also, if you can help it, don’t be shrill a Westchester mother. And stop wearing white tennis shoes and stone washed jeans (see Jerry Seinfeld look), it’s not 1992.